


like the moon holds onto the tide

by temerarious



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (largely ignores Season 8), Allura (Voltron) Lives, Fluff, Getting Together, Light Angst, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Minor Allura/Lance (Voltron), Shiro POV, Slow Burn, Vignettes, as slow as 7k can burn at least, with a very high hugs-per-hundred-words ratio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 09:19:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22967602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temerarious/pseuds/temerarious
Summary: “You’re happy here."“I’m happyyou’rehere.”
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 115
Collections: Sheithlentines 2020





	like the moon holds onto the tide

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Sheithlentines to @axoloart on twitter! I hope you enjoy this fic =) I had a lot of fun folding different elements from your prompt into it—you gave me so much fun stuff to work with!
> 
> Title from [Like You Mean It](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNcXlGXR5Fk), by Ruelle.

.-19.

It was more of a mutual understanding than anything they actually discussed: when the war finally ended, he and Keith stepped forward alongside Allura so that the others could step back. They’d all been so young when they became Paladins, but Lance had been young for his age and very attached to his family, and violence had never come naturally to Hunk.

And Pidge. God, Pidge was still young enough to make his heart break a little whenever he thought about it.

They all of them had fought and bled and lost, and they deserved to rest. In a perfect world, peace wouldn’t be something they had to trade for. Allura would have the quiet space to bond with the surviving Alteans and meet Lance’s extensive family. Keith would be able to take his mother out into the desert to visit his father’s grave.

Shiro wasn’t sure what he would do with himself. Sleep for a week. Get a therapist, maybe. Visit his family back home in Japan.

It wasn’t an option for them. The Lions might be gone, but the universe still clamoured for its paladins, and the burden of responsibility for maintaining the fragile peace somehow fell to them. It was an ugly truth: the war being over did very little to mend what the Empire had spent ten thousand years breaking. Every world the Galra had ever touched was in uproar.

Shiro himself was the only person able to fully operate Earth’s most viable defense against future attacks—before he had time to really comprehend that the fighting was over, he was promoted and running drills with junior officers who were somehow still older than him.

As soon as Allura woke from the exhausted faint she’d fallen into after the very end, she was on her feet again, mediating between Coalition members who didn’t understand where to vent their pain and confusion with the war simply over.

As for Keith, he’d been needed. Desperately needed. New Daibazaal’s position was so precarious, especially in that first year. In spite of the countless Blades who’d given their lives over the Empire’s millennia, it was really only Keith who was known and recognized as a hero across the universe.

So they scattered.

.-18.

“I’ll be taking over from Kolivan as Leader of the Blades,” Keith had told him on the third day after the war ended.

Shiro had always trusted Keith’s lead. He was passionate and caring and brave, and had the catch-fire brilliance to keep his reckless side from being an Achilles’ heel, even if Shiro was still hoping he’d grow out of it, for his own sake. That was what he’d wanted for Keith and the others when, thinking he was dying, he’d told Keith he wanted him to take Shiro’s place as leader, a million years ago, before he’d really died.

As proud as he was of everything Keith had done as the Black Paladin, he’d come to realize that Keith felt very differently about it.

His memories of the Paladins presenting themselves to Black were foggy, mostly coloured by his own intense relief when he sensed Keith in the pilot’s chair, but the clone’s early memories of Keith were crystal clear—rough edges and right instincts and still resented in ways that had everything and nothing to do with Shiro’s seeming reappearance.

Even after Shiro was really back, there was always a tension there that clearly made Keith unhappy in his role, however well he filled it. He’d struggled to befriend the Paladins, struggled even more to maintain those friendships when the others were so ready to see his authority as distance or distain. It was something he’d battled his way through with enough success to make anyone proud, but he hadn’t come through unwounded. Shiro hadn’t expected Keith to willingly take up the mantel of leadership again for a long time, perhaps ever.

But Keith hadn’t seemed fazed when he spoke. If anything, he looked excited. Seeing Shiro’s surprised expression, he shrugged.

“Kolivan and Krolia are going to be busy knocking together some kind of government, and a lot of the more senior Blades died during the war. Kolivan asked me, and I’m going to.”

None of that answered Shiro’s concerns. If anything, they only made him worry that Keith, too, had been backed into a corner where he was the only person for a job. But there was a smile at the corner of his mouth that made Shiro want to smile back.

.-17.

There wasn’t much time the day before Keith left for Daibazaal. Shiro was still in the middle of staffing the Atlas, and in the middle of getting promoted, and somehow also still in the middle of getting debriefed as well. There were a thousand different things that needed his approval or his attention, and he wanted to do this right, but none of it could ever be as important as doing right by Keith.

Somehow, he scraped together a few evening hours, and he and Keith drove out to the desert like they used to do to watch the sunset. It wasn’t quite the same—they only managed to beg, borrow, or steal a single hover bike, and the farewell feast Shiro had stowed away in the storage compartment was only a scant step up from emergency rations.

In the moment, it hadn’t seemed to matter, though. They couldn’t race like they used to, but there was a calmer joy to speeding along together and feeling Keith behind him, leaning easily into each turn with him.

The sunset was even more beautiful than he remembered, and even knowing that was probably thanks to all the new debris in the atmosphere didn't spoil it just then, but Shiro’s eyes couldn’t seem to linger on it. It was Keith’s face, bathed in the fiery glow, that he kept returning to.

He could still feel the lingering heat of it on his skin when the last sliver of the sun disappeared, but evening chill fell fast in the desert. Keith shifted closer, leaning his shoulder against Shiro’s.

.-16.

In the morning, there wasn’t time for more than a long, tight hug in front of the ship carrying Keith and a last few wounded Blades to New Daibazaal.

It didn’t feel long enough.

.-15.

The Atlas wasn’t his first command. He’d led the Paladins after all. But that was always in negotiation with Allura, with Coran’s advice and Keith’s undaunted support. It had never been him alone at the top of the chain of command.

It wasn’t his first command, but the loneliness made it feel like something new.

.-14.

Intergalactic communication was a complicated undertaking. Large ships and busy hubs might have the infrastructure for near-instant transmissions, but smaller ships and less central systems didn’t have the capacity.

Shiro’s first and only abuse of his authority as captain of an exceptionally large ship with an impressive communications array was to route Allura’s communications with Pidge, Hunk, and, most frequently, Lance, through the Atlas. It was the difference between trading broken up voice recordings back and forth every few hours and carrying on a face-to-face conversation, and it would take a harder man than him to deny his friends that pleasure.

He and Veronica hadn’t been close before Kerberos—their very different specializations meant they didn’t share many classes as cadets or duties as officers—but the discrete smiles she sent his way whenever he gave the order to his bewildered communications officer to relay an intergalactic transmission from an actual alien princess to a private residence in Cuba made him feel like he had at least one real ally on board, not just subordinates and strangers.

It would have to be enough.

.-13.

For so long, his whole life was defined by urgency. No time to waste, no room for error. There was always something driving him.

He was doing important work on the Atlas, he knew that. But somehow it felt like he was just marking time.

.-12.

[transmission from NDV: 371029, ID: Kogane, Keith]

“—don’t know when we’re going to be in range to send long messages again, but—

[transmission corrupted]

“—pictures. The Wolf is a big help. I wish you could—

[transmission corrupted]

“—gets through to you okay. I’ll call properly as soon as I get back to New—“

[transmission corrupted]

[end transmission]

.-11.

There was an etiquette to every social exchange that Shiro used to know by heart. He’d neither enjoyed nor disliked it, but he’d understood and accepted it, back before Kerberos. He could still remember the shape of it, but the substance seemed to be gone now. The empty, impersonal ‘right things to say’ and frictionless exchanges. Conversations that felt immediately forgettable because he’d had them a thousand times before, and usually with people who meant more to him.

 _How’ve you been lately?_ And Pidge will roll her eyes and tell him she doesn’t need fussing over, then launch into a detailed breakdown of her latest project in the next breath.

 _How’s your family doing?_ And no matter what the tone of the conversation had been, Lance would be ready with a smile and a new anecdote.

 _Are you busy next week?_ And Matt will deliver the blatant lie _I’m never busy for you_ , and cheerfully make plans he knows he’ll end up half-way cancelling. Drinks at a bar in Plaht City will reliably turn into takeout in his lab while they catch up, but he always makes the initial plans with zeal.

 _How’s work?_ And Hunk will be off, chatting at a steady pace about new recipes he’s working on, or a collaborative project with the Holts.

 _What’s new with you?_ And Allura and Coran have a fresh story to share about the trials and tribulations of putting down roots on New Altea and getting to know the other surviving Alteans.

Even on duty, it was hard. Shiro had always had the gift of easy manners, something he’d only grown to appreciate more after watching a young and very prickly Keith clash with his peers constantly during his cadet years. Despite having a similarly large skill gap, Shiro had always managed to be friendly with his classmates and even his senior officers. It spared him the million small difficulties resentment might otherwise have drawn his way.

He’d never found it easy to form close bonds, though, and that’s what he felt the lack of now. There was a gratification to looking after his crew, learning names and needs and skillsets. He appreciated that the effort he put in didn’t go unnoticed, but it never seemed to change anything either. He was well-liked as a commanding officer, but the distance remained.

  
.-10.

“How’s you mom doing?”

Keith smiled, the realtime transmission from his place on New Daibazaal catching the fond expression before he could distract himself with answering.

Something in Shiro’s chest eased.

.-9.

The Atlas had been on a steady pattern of increasingly far-ranging Sol orbits since the war ended, but hadn’t been out of the system yet. Now, with Earth well on its way to recovering and new defenses in the works, a plan was put into place to make an official diplomatic visit to New Altea on the two-year anniversary of the war.

A year and two months after the end of the war, Lieutenant Matthew Holt was promoted to Senior Engineer for the Atlas to make the preparations.

.-8.

Somehow, Shiro’s golden boy reputation was still potent enough that Iverson gave him a dire lecture about not letting “that Holt kid” undermine his authority by being too familiar in front of the crew.

Shiro hugged Matt as soon as he showed up on the command deck to officially report for duty.

.-7.

Having a real friend on board made all the difference. ‘Off-duty’ and ‘at loose ends’ didn’t feel like they meant the same thing anymore. Where being invited to eat dinner or play cards with a commanding officer might be inappropriate, being cheerfully dragged along by one of the Engineering crew was only embarrassing, and Matt took ruthless advantage whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Life quickly grew a lot brighter.

It did make Shiro realize just how much he’d been leaning on his position as an excuse, though. Easier to bury himself in work and protocol and necessity than to deal with anything else.

What would he have done, at the end of the war, if he’d been free to do whatever he wanted? At times, it felt like he'd only have been more at sea.

.-6.

He might have been lonely that first year on the Atlas, but he’d never felt unloved.

It wasn’t just that Keith had said the words, bloodied and bruising, with Shiro caught there, waiting to be the thing that killed him. He’d known for a lot longer than that, been told a hundred ways that didn’t require words. The way Keith trusted him. How he’d fought for him. How he’d laughed with him.

Years ago, in another life, he met an angry, lonely boy who was used to empty words and dismissive voices. It had taken a long time for the words Shiro said to weigh with Keith anywhere close to as much his actions did. As he came to know Keith better, he realized he held the same true for himself—long silences followed by a quick-burning temper didn’t consistently reflect Keith’s thoughts or feelings, and his frustration with that fact only worsened the issue. His body language was always much more reliable—stiff and guarded, loose and at ease, pulled in small and worried.

Resting his hand on Keith’s shoulder and feeling him lean into the touch was all the best ways they communicated distilled.

Long-distance communication stripped away all the easy parts and left bare words as an unwieldy tool in Keith’s hands, and Shiro knew that he hated it. The other paladins would complain sometimes about how disjointed Keith could be when it came to catch-up calls, but Shiro never went more than a few days without hearing from him, even if it was just broken-up transmissions that had travelled too far to retain more than fragments.

He felt very loved.

.-5.

When they left for New Altea, the Atlas was full and bustling in a way it never had been before. Iverson and a full compliment of diplomats and aides were on board of course, but Pidge, Hunk, and Lance had negotiated their way on board as well.

Shiro wondered if Lance had given the Garrison contingent any notice that he fully planned to disembark on New Altea and stay for good.

.-4.

Allura, Queen of the New Altean Republic, was glowing and gracious and _busy_. Shiro always admired her deft hand with the Coalition, but here more than ever, it was evident that this was the work she was raised to and excelled at, balancing a hundred duties with poise.

In the midst of exchanging courtesies and friendly gifts, she still found a graceful way to gather the paladins to her and make off for a private dinner with just them and Coran. She even contrived to somehow not make the rest of them feel like a crowd of third wheels despite her and Lance holding hands under the table straight through four courses and dessert.

The only person missing was Keith.

.-3.

[transmission from NDV: 371029, ID: Kogane, Keith]

“—held up in the Boutreel System. I’ll catch the first shuttle over to New Altea as soon as we’ve landed and—

[transmission corrupted]

“—n’t miss seeing you for anything.”

[end transmission]

.-2.

There were times in his life when Shiro felt trapped. Being a prisoner of the Galra Empire, for one. When he was lost in Black. When he first found out about his illness.

And a fourth instance that was significantly different: when he was stationed to the Atlas.

Every other time he felt this way, he fought hard and pursued every avenue of escape. He counted out the breaks in guard patrols and reached out to the paladins anytime he had a hope of them hearing him and set himself an ambitious timeline to live out a lifetime’s worth of dreaming in however much time he got.

Since he was stationed to the Atlas, though, he’d felt—passive. Unhappy, and doing nothing about it because he felt somehow stuck. Good things did happen, but they came along by chance and however much he appreciated them in the moment, they didn’t feel real or _his_.

.-1.

“…with that said, we are proud to announce that the Atlas will be honouring its beginnings as a combined effort of Human and Altean ingenuity by carrying a crew composed of both races to explore the far-flung edges of the universe, to offer friendship and exchange knowledge. This endeavour marks a true and final end to the tyranny and war that decimated all peoples of the universe for so long.

“Leading this historic mission….”

.0.

“Excuse me, can you tell me where I’d find a shuttle to New Daibazaal?”

.1.

Two hours into the three varga journey, he panicked a little. A terrible mental image took root in his mind of himself, glancing out of the shuttle window just in time to catch sight of Keith looking out the window of his own New Altea-bound shuttle.

At this range, his communicator could reach New Daibazaal and he called Krolia before he could overthink that as well.

She accepted the call before he’d even raised the receiver back to his ear.

“Shiro? Is something wrong?”

.2.

She’d laughed at him, but it had been kind, and deeply, deeply worth it.

A small in-atmosphere ship that was evidently the Galra answer to cars collected him, a still grinning Krolia in the pilot’s seat, and whisked him away to a different landing site just in time to see a refurbished Imperial transport ship with the numbers ‘371029’ stenciled in Galra numerals on the nose touch down.

The air beside him flickered, and an enormous blue wolf—larger still than the last time Shiro’d seen him—materialized out of nothingness to lick Krolia enthusiastically across the ear and then, with a surprised-sounding yip, gave Shiro an even more thorough greeting, consisting of bowling Shiro over, pinning him in place with sheer volume of floof, and licking whatever limbs he managed to wriggle free with great enthusiasm before resettling to trap him once more.

Krolia was laughing at him again.

“He would have flown directly to New Altea if he didn’t have passengers,” she said. “Never mind that he got caught up in a firefight on Boutreel Prime and has been flying for at least twelve vargas since.”

Even though the volume of fur covering him, Shiro still heard the familiar hiss of a cabin depressurizing. With a happy yip, the Space Wolf teleported away again, back to his companion’s side. Shiro straightened up, half-hidden behind Krolia’s small ship, in time to see a worn and dusty Keith jogging over to Krolia’s side to give her a quick, warm hug.

“Mom, I’m back. I need to get to the shuttle port as fast as…”

Their eyes met, and Keith launched himself at Shiro.

.3.

There really was nothing like being with the person you loved best, near enough to hold them close and feel their thudding heart against your ribs, their shuddering breath against your neck.

Warm and heavy and rib-crackingly real.

.4.

Shiro hoped Krolia’s ongoing and very evident amusement at his and now Keith’s expense would be sufficient for her to forgive them for having the Interim Director of a whole planet chauffeur them around like this.

She dropped them and the Wolf off in front of what Shiro had first taken to be a library, though the strange hexagonal angles of the buildings in that part of the city made it difficult to draw comparisons. The Wolf vanished in a flash before his hind paws even hit the curiously metallic surface of the pavement, and Keith gestured for Shiro to follow him in.

The build’s interior looked even more like a library, and there were various Galra, some in Blade uniforms, some in a flashy array of clashing colours that Shiro had to assume were the model of Galra casual wear in this part of New Daibazaal, dispersed throughout an expansive entrance room, pouring over various documents.

Keith raised a finger to his lips, ignoring the curious looks they were drawing, and ushered Shiro towards a staircase, leading up from the side of the building and crooking at on odd angle in the middle to accommodate the hexagonal shape of the room.

Up another stairway, down a hallway that had this same odd bends in it, and Keith pressed his hand to palm reader, letting them into a set of rooms Shiro recognized from their more successful realtime video transmissions.

It smelled like Keith and space wolf and home.

.5.

Keith had already been exhausted when he landed, and was clearly running on fumes and happy adrenaline as he showed Shiro around the apartment space and then back to the kitchen for food and something to drink. He was a little punch-drunk silly with it, in a way Shiro had seen hints of when they were at the Garrison but never during the war, when everything felt so weighed down. When had Keith ever been so free with his smiles, so ready to circle back from his self-appointed tea-making mission for no other reason than to pull Shiro down to him for a tenth-eleveth-twelfth hug?

“You’re happy here,” he said, and maybe the silliness was catching because he pulled Keith back in close to hide a laugh in his hair.

“I’m happy _you’re_ here.”

.6.

Keith’s initial burst of energy burned out quickly, and it was so natural to fall into a companionable silence while they ate, Shiro nudging his foot against Keith’s shin occasionally when he looked a bit like he might drop off right then and there, face planted in the strangely filling clear broth soup he’d prepared for them both.

Keith tilted a little alarmingly on his way to put the dishes in the sanitizer, and it was easy to tease and joke his way into sitting on the edge of the round bathtub while Keith scrubbed away the sweat and grime of a hard fight, “to make sure you don’t nod off and drown in there.”

Really, he just didn’t want to be apart. Not even a room away. Not yet.

.7.

With the grim determination of someone too wildly exhausted to really gauge their own condition, Keith installed them on the couch and turned on a monitor with the intention of keeping Shiro, who wasn’t at all bored, entertained with a selection of Pre-Empire Galra entertainment, none of which Shiro would be able to understand without a translator.

For better or for worse, he drifted off in the middle of an amused Shiro’s third suggestion that maybe it would be better to just turn in for tonight, slumping forward against his shoulder and resting there.

The steady rhythm of Keith’s breathing was still so instantly familiar—the long silence of a slow inhale, followed by the noisy huff of the exhale. He used to fall asleep at odd hours and in odder places all the time in the early days of their acquaintance—a quirk he grew out of by the time they were close enough that Shiro might have teased him for it. Still, it had stuck with him, a crystallized memory even after all the amnesia and incorporeality. There'd never been a right moment to ask about that, to find out whether it was a habit from his rocky childhood, or if maybe young Galra needed even more sleep than human teenagers, or if it was just something particular to Keith at that point in his life.

He should probably be digging deep for the strength to feel some degree of shame over just how much thought he'd put into that. There was a limit to how endeared one could reasonably be by someone just—sleeping. Most sentient species did, after all. And yet.

In a minute, when he was sure that sleep had well and truly taken hold, he would pick Keith up and carry him to the odd, circular bed he’d seen on his hasty tour earlier. He’d give a pro-forma thought to sleeping on the couch, but probably climb in next to Keith instead because they’d shared before, he wouldn’t mind, and anywhere but side-by-side would be too far right now.

For now, though, he pressed his cheek against the top of Keith’s head and let his prosthetic hand rub gentle circles into Keith’s back and listened to him breathe, and thought about how it had been two entire years since he last saw this man as anything but pixels on a screen, and he didn’t know how he could ever bring himself to leave.

.8.

What if he could stay, always?

.9.

Shiro drifted off eventually, only waking briefly when the Wolf came to settle into bed for the night. He could only be thankful that Keith had a bed large enough for himself, his increasingly enormous space wolf, and a large, six foot-four human to sleep comfortably. A boon of standardized Galra sizing to balance out the unusably high shelves in kitchen, perhaps.

When he woke up properly, Keith was still beside him, but he was awake and sitting up, legs crossed, tapping something out on a data pad. Shiro must have moved enough to catch his attention, because he glanced down at him and smiled.

“‘Morning,” Shiro mumbled through the last clinging layers of sleep. The temptation to bury his face in his pillow and return to the most restful sleep he’d had in actual years was strong, but the lure of an awake and completely coherent Keith was stronger.

He turned his head to the side again to get another look. Still typing. “What’re you doing?”

“Report from the Boutreel mission.”

Shiro hummed in understanding. “Better get that in on time, I hear your boss is a real stickler.”

Keith grinned. “You say that like it’s a joke, but as of a few phoebs ago, there’s now a committee that gets to tell me off if I take too long on these kinds of things. Gotta keep my record clear.”

Shiro huffed a laugh, and rolled closer to doze while Keith finished.

.10.

When Keith’s report was properly submitted and he said he could show his face downstairs again (the presumed library on the first floor was the Blade of Marmora Archives, Shiro now learned), they moved back to the kitchen in search of breakfast.

He was tasked with peeling the rind off a deep purple fruit. He cut away a bumpy sliver of the flesh to taste, and despite a texture that fell somewhere in between citrus and pomegranate, the juice tasted almost like a mango’s.

Keith caught him sneaking another bite and laughed at him, holding out his hand for a piece for himself. The purple of it stained his fingers and mouth until he licked the juice away.

Shiro thought about days upon days of nutritional algae paste and Hunk doing his level best to make it taste like anything else. Culinary miracle worker though he might be, the best of a bad job could never really stand up against something that was simple and good from the start.

Then again, there was a strong possibility that the fruit he was eating had been extinct for ten thousand years until Allura brought New Daibazaal into being, so maybe miracles were a necessary part of the process.

.11.

Shiro could remember thinking about Keith and communication, and how words on their own didn’t suit him. Maybe it took one to know one after all, because it all came spilling out of him so easily now, when they were finally together. Every frustration he hadn’t known how to explain, the feeling of being trapped, stuck in his role on the Atlas. The perverse way his dissatisfaction grew the more reasons he had to be happy on his ship. The sense of being shut in once and forever when Iverson made the announcement that brought the Atlas’s mission statement more closely in line with Shiro’s own lifelong dream than ever.

And, ashamed, how he’d wanted to come to Keith, but he’d also wanted to _run_.

.12.

“That makes a lot of sense to me,” Keith said after a moment.

Whatever Shiro had been expecting, it wasn’t that. The word ‘honourable’ felt out of step with modernity, but it suited Keith. For all the rough edges that had made so many people doubt him along the way, Keith had never shied away from a thing that needed to be done just because it was difficult. He knew without arrogance that Keith admired him and loved him both, but knowing that did nothing to lessen his apprehension. Keith wasn’t one for softening words, and even if Shiro wasn’t quite expecting to be outright condemned, the word ‘duty’ had been ringing in his ears for years now, and he’d been a little afraid to hear it echoed back to him in Keith’s voice.

“I’ve been worried about you,” Keith said slowly. “It’s something I thought about with the Lions, too.”

That was a non sequitur if Shiro had ever heard one, and the mounting confusion must have shown, because Keith continued hastily, eyes darting to Shiro's face then quickly away again.

“I mean, the difference between choosing, and being chosen. When it matters. If it matters.” He took a breath, paused to chew on his lip.

Or his words, Shiro realized. He wasn’t the only one worried about some kind of condemnation. Without thinking, he reached out with his human arm to cover Keith’s clenched fist with a gentler pressure. A beat later, Keith turned his hand over under Shiro’s to grip it in return, and continued.

“When the Red Lion first chose me, I was—proud. Glad, I guess. Being worthy, or whatever, felt good. Being able to do something important felt good. Then it started to sink in that in ten thousand deca-phoebs, it was only us. Ten thousand deca-phoebs of Zarkon and Haggar ruining lives and killing innocent people, and what if we messed up? What if one of us had said no? Lance and the others wanted to at the start, but then it was too heavy to put down. And then.”

He cut off for a moment, and Shiro gripped his hand a little tighter.

“And then you died, and the lions chose again. They waited ten thousand deca-phoebs, and then they changed their minds just like that? And I know they had their reasons. I’m not mad at them. They weren’t any more or less fair than anything else, because fair didn’t factor in. Of course it wasn’t fair that you’d been through everything after Kerberos and didn’t get to just come home. Or that Pidge was so young and only wanted to look for Matt and her dad and couldn’t. Or that Allura waited just as long as the Lions, but they didn’t want her until. Until later.”

“So it makes sense to me, that being told you're the only one who can do something would feel wrong, even if it’s something you might have wanted to do anyway.”

.13.

“I thought it might be the same for you,” Shiro confessed. “I was afraid to ask, when you left Earth, except that you seemed happy about it.”

“Leaving?”

“Leading the Blades.”

“Oh.” He laughed a little.

“What’s funny?”

“It kind of was. The same, I mean. There’d been some open discussions about what should become of the Blades with the Empire gone. Some people thought we should formally disband but really just disperse and keep an eye out for dissidents. You know, keep on spying, but on our own for real this time. I guess I got a bit outspoken about it—”

Shiro’s mouth twitched, and Keith shot him a look.

“—And said people with our training and experience and information networks would do better dealing with the fallout from the war—all the petty tyrants and broken treaties and disasters from infrastructure that went up in flames with the Empire—than sitting around at home, waiting for something to go wrong. After that meeting, Kolivan told me I was the only man for the job, and I got ticked off.”

“Again?” Shiro smiled, and it was a small joy when Keith wrinkled his nose and smiled back. Two years was long enough to forget a lot of things, but they could still read each other.

“Again,” he confirmed. “Looking back, I was kind of unfair to him, because he and Krolia were the ‘only ones for the job’ of putting the government back together. I said the only way I’d do it was if he understood that from day one I’d be doing everything I could to make it so I could vanish into the ether any time I wanted and everything would keep working just the same.”

“How’d that go over?”

“He said he wanted me to do it even more now, but that I shouldn’t let my mom hear me talking about vanishing when everyone knows I have just the friend to make it happen.” He nudged at the Wolf, who was sprawled out across the entire kitchen floor, with an affectionate toe.

“But Shiro,” he said, suddenly earnest. “I did it. That committee I mentioned early? The one that’ll get mad if I skip out on doing my reports properly? Every one of the members does the same job I do, on a smaller scale. If I make a decision they think isn’t in the best interests of the Blades or whatever groups we’re working with at the time, they can challenge me on it. And if I died or quit or took the Wolf out for an extra extra long walk and never came back, they’d make group decisions until they nominated someone new to head things up. Everything would keep going just fine.”

.14.

Keith had to step away downstairs to handle what the messenger at his door had made sound like world-ending mayhem but Keith referred to as a “minor problem,” which left Shiro with some time to think and pet as much of the Wolf as was in reach.

(There were situations when having a detached, levitating prosthesis really did come in _handy_.)

He thought about retiring from the Garrison, leaving the Atlas dead in the water and cutting off humanity’s first real foray into the reaches of space. He couldn’t live with himself, if that’s what leaving meant.

He thought about quitting, and the Altas taking off without him to see new unexplored regions of space. Earth was right at the fringe of the known universe—one of the reasons the Alteans were willing to collaborate, since it meant a convenient staging ground. Staying behind while Matt and Veronica and the others disappeared into the wide universe to see things he’d never see, while he, what. Became a reliable taste-tester for Hunk at long last. Went home to Japan for an extended visit after all these years. At loose ends after bowing out of a dream he’d had all his life and could never really be cold to.

He thought about staying on the Atlas, but this time, it wasn’t just him who could bring the ship to life. Any member of the crew could step into his shoes at need. There was no more semi-mystical air about the role of Captain of the Atlas. No more half-bridged distance from a starry-eyed, solicitous crew. He could lead in truth, not just in word, going out on missions with his crew the way Keith did with the Blades.

Even then….

.15.

He thought about Keith, the most stubborn, willful person he’d ever met, finding the confidence to lead again by carefully surrounding himself with people who could tell him ‘no.’

The young man who’d once found a special joy in being the Red Lion’s one and only pilot working diligently to make himself replaceable.

The battle-tested paladin who’d refused, against all hope, to let Shiro disappear from the world, and succeeded.

 _I love you_ , he’d said, the words offered up like lifeline, like a gift, and Shiro hadn’t said it back, after. Hadn’t known what it would mean to him or to Keith in that moment if he did.

For Keith, would it matter who did the choosing? And whether he’d chosen in return?

.16.

“You’re going to spoil him,” Keith said from the doorway.

Shiro and the Wolf turned in synchrony to greet him, though Shiro’s smile was rather more restrained than the Wolf’s choice of shoving his whole head against Keith’s chest, leaving him with the choice of scratching his ears or getting pushed bodily back out the door.

Keith laughed. “See? Already my petting abilities aren’t measuring up.”

That wasn’t how it looked to Shiro, and he would have said so, but Keith was already continuing.

“You’ll just have to stay here forever.”

And if he hadn’t just been thinking about exactly that, he might not have heard the wistful note under Keith’s joking tone. Might not have felt his pulse suddenly jump, because—

 _I love you_ , Keith had said. _The person I love best_ , Shiro had thought of him as, liking the play on words. He should do better by the person he loved, but it was still the best he’d ever loved. The most he’d ever loved. The person he admired, who he was content beside.

“What if I did?”

.17.

Keith froze for a second, stricken eyes caught on Shiro's before quickly darting away to the Wolf again as he forced himself back into motion. He drew breath to move the ‘joke’ along gamely, but Shiro was already on his feet, the distance between them swallowed up in three quick strides. With no more time, no more room for misunderstanding, Shiro kissed him.

It was poorly planned, as first kisses went. The Wolf was very much underfoot, and Keith’s mouth had been a little too open at the start, getting ready to speak. It was also perfect, as first kisses went. Keith made a soft, urgent noise and pulled him in close by the collar until he could wind his arms around Shiro’s shoulders—too tight, too close, except that it could never be. He hadn’t realized what a desperate, bone-deep hunger this had been, to wrap himself around Keith and hold him tight without the socially ingrained timer for a friendly hug constantly ticking down at the back of his mind, telling him he’d have to let go. He didn’t want to, and the desperate grip of Keith’s hands in the back of his shirt was telling him not to, either.

Suddenly, it was unbearable, unforgivable, that he’d never said it back. He broke the kiss and pulled Keith even closer, deeper into his arms until he could breathe the words out against his hair, “I love you, Keith,” then, “I love you,” and then again.

.18.

They made it to the couch eventually. The Wolf had made himself scarce at some point, probably when it became clear that none of the goings-on would circle back to ear scratches. They didn’t separate, only rearranged themselves a little more conversationally, with Keith leaning back against the arm of the sofa, arms looped around Shiro’s middle, and Shiro pulled down after to lie mostly on top of him, though he'd shifted just enough to the side that Keith wouldn’t be crushed.

“I did mean it,” Shiro said. “It wasn’t just because you made a joke. I was thinking about it before.”

Keith waited, quiet.

“You gave me a lot of perspective that I really needed. The things you said about choosing or being chosen—I don’t know if they mean quite the same thing to me as they do to you, but it does make a difference. It’s part of why I’ve been feeling so trapped and along for the ride in my own life.”

He took a deep breath. Pressed a kiss to the delicate skin under Keith’s ear, because he wanted to and now he could, and the little shiver that chased through Keith’s arms where they held him only made him want to do it again.

“It’s more than that, though. I miss you, Keith. Every day. We’ve been apart before, but it was never like this, where it’s just the way things are going to always be unless something changes. I miss talking to you all the time, and just being together, and I already miss kissing you even though I’d never done it before today.”

Keith snorted a laugh, and Shiro couldn’t see to be sure, but it felt like Keith had turned his head to brush his mouth against Shiro’s hair.

The hardest part came next. “I miss those things. But I also miss working together. I like flying, Keith, but I like it best with you.” Keith’s arms went tight around him. Or had he gone tense? There was no pulling back now, though. “I want to see more of the universe, but it’ll only be half right if you’re not there seeing it with me. It’s so much to ask, Keith, fuck—“

“Ask me,” he demanded.

Shiro had to have misheard, but then Keith was wriggling under him until they could see each other’s faces, and his eyes were clear and earnest.

“Ask me,” he said again, and this time it was more like a plea.

.19.

“Stay with me.”

“Always.”

.?.

Keith overruled Shiro’s protests and promised that if the Atlas wouldn’t have anyone else, he’d join the crew. On the shuttle back to New Altea, he could feel the shape of the apprehension that should be flooding him at the weight of that promise, knowing that this man who kept his word with care had sworn to uproot his whole life—leave his family and the order he’d devoted years to—all for love of Shiro. Instead, it left him warm, and humbled, and truly content to be returning to the Atlas for the first time in years.

As it turned out, Keith's promise was unnecessary. An earnest conversation with the Atlas, and one Matthew Holt jumped rank from Lieutenant to Captain. He took to his new authority with a zeal to put fear into the hearts of the admiralty, and confusion into his new crew's grasp of the chain of command.

Thereafter, he referred to it as “The time Shiro ran away to New Daibazaal and eloped.” He repeated the story loud and often, until it was generally accepted as fact. Matters were further confused by Shiro taking up the official position of Keith’s partner among the Blades.

The final blow to anyone’s hope of getting the story straight was Keith’s steadfast insistence on referring to Shiro as his partner in their personal life as well, both before and after the wedding.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @temerarious_ on [twitter](https://twitter.com/temerarious_) if you want to come chat about Sheith/Voltron!


End file.
